Musings, leadership tidbits and quotes posted by a retired Navy Captain (really just a high performing 2nd Class Petty Officer) who hung up his uniform a bit too early. He still wears his Navy service on his sleeve. He needs to get over that. "ADVANCE WARNING - NO ORIGINAL THOUGHT!" A "self-appointed" lead EVANGELIST for the "cryptologic community". Keeping CRYPTOLOGY alive-one day and Sailor at a time. 2015 is 80th Anniversary of the Naval Security Group.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Burn the boats

Hugh MacLeod's great work available at www.gapingvoid.com

Naval Postgraduate School

Article By: Amanda D. Stein

Clouds of smoke billowed from the beaches of Veracruz as hundreds of men faced the uncertainty of their fate. Outnumbered 300 to one and facing a long, difficult battle with the Aztecs, Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés ordered his men to burn their ships. Eliminating any chance they had of retreat, Cortés had left his crew with only two options – succeed or die.

The year was 1518, and the battle to secure the territories of what is now Mexico waged vehemently. With a courageous, resolute leader and almost certain death if they were defeated, Cortés’ men accepted his challenge, and conquered the Aztecs against immeasurable odds.

Today, the U.S., if not the world, is facing a different kind of adversary – one that has no single identity and outnumbers us at equally staggering odds. It is the war over information and it requires bold leadership and an unwavering approach. The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) has referenced Cortés’ brave mentality, even echoed it in his battle to secure and obtain information – a field that has come to be known as Information Dominance.

10 comments:

Anonymous
said...

To put this into modern terms, it is like a shore command with an absolute requirement to receive, process, analyze, comment and disseminate information when faced with the overwhelming problem of securing the data, deciding to disconnect from the world wide web, disable all built-in machine capabilities to record or store data and then telling the users to get on with their work.